Hollinger Corp. 
P H8.5 




y 1 

What Parents Should 
Teach their Children 



(By 

Rev. Sylvanus Stall, d. d. 

Author of the " Self and Sex " Series of Books 




Published for the Social Service Commission of the 
Northern Baptist Convention 

SHAILER MATHEWS 

Dean of the Divinity School, University of Chicago 
Chairman of the Editorial Committee 



American Baptist Publication Society 

Philadelphia 
Boston Chicago St. Louis Toronto, Can. 






Copyright 1912 by 
A. J. ROWLAND, Secretary 



Published May, 1912 










CONTENTS 

Page 
How to tell children the origin of life 7 

Where the first man came from 8 

Power to perpetuate 9 

Father plants, mother plants, and baby plants. . . jj 

Perpetuation of oysters 18 

Perpetuation of fishes 19 

Perpetuation of birds 20 

Perpetuation of animals 22 

How God could have created mankind 24 

The perpetuation of human life 27 



WHAT PARENTS SHOULD 
TEACH THEIR CHILDREN 1 



The purpose of this pamphlet is not to discuss 
" the duty of parents to their children " ; that is too 
wide in its scope. My thought and purpose are to 
consider only the subjects which most parents neg- 
lect, and many purposely avoid. I am omitting 
what all thoughtful parents regard as vitally im- 
portant, and but few judicious parents fail to im- 
press upon their children. What I am about to pre- 
sent is what parents generally omit from their ad- 
monitions and wholly shut out from their conver- 
sations with their children. The sad mistake of 
these parents is seen in the almost universal lament 
of the boys : 

" My father, a good Christian man, warned me 
against the use of tobacco, taught me to be honest, 
and instructed me concerning every danger ex- 
cept this one, into which all boys, unless warned, 
are sure to fall. Where I most needed to be 
guarded, he uttered not one syllable of warning/' 

1 All rights reserved. 



6 Social Service Series 

From numerous tests made, it is shown that only 
about three per cent of audiences composed entirely 
of men have ever been made intelligent upon the 
subject of their reproductive nature before they 
had arrived at the age of fourteen years, by their 
own parents. 

What the writer proposes in this chapter is not 
only what children ought to be told, but how they 
ought to be told. When the mice in their council 
sought to protect themselves from the cat, it was 
quickly decided that a bell attached to the neck of 
the cat would afford them the necessary warning 
of approaching danger; but when they came to 
decide who among them was to attach the bell, 
the real difficulty was disclosed. It would be 
easy to name twenty publications, in recent years, 
largely devoted to the importance of telling children 
honestly concerning the origin of life, every one of 
which fails to tell the parent how. They simply 
urge upon parents the necessity of doing something 
which they themselves are unable to do. When 
the " how to tell " is made simple, safe, and satis- 
factory, the story will be told to the children, and 
not until then. Thousands would instruct and 
warn their children, but they simply do not know 
how. 

Personally, I know no way to make a child in- 
telligent without associating the entire subject with 
the infinite wisdom of the Creator. Neither have I 



What Parents Should Teach their Children 7 

much faith in the salutary influence of intelligence 
which is not associated with a quickened moral 
sense. Intelligence is important, but the moral 
sense must not be neglected. 

The parent is the proper person to communicate 
this information to his or her child. When the 
child is old enough to ask an intelligent question, 
it is old enough to receive an intelligent answer. 
The following presentation will enable the parent to 
make selection of such information as is suited 
to the age and intelligence of the child. 

How to tell children the origin of life. 

My dear child, the question you have asked is 
one that every man and woman, every intelligent 
boy and girl, and even. many very young children 
have asked of themselves or others — whence and 
how they came to be in the world? 

If you were to ask where the locomotive and 
the steamship, or the telegraph and the telephone 
came from, it would be wisest, in order that we 
might have the most satisfactory answer, that we 
should go back to the beginning of these things, 
and consider what was done by George Stephenson 
and Robert Fulton, by Benjamin Franklin and 
Samuel Morse, by Graham Bell and Thomas Edi- 
son toward developing and perfecting these useful 
inventions. 



8 Social Service Series 

Where the first man came from. 

In order that we may, in like manner, have the 
best understanding of the answer to the question, 
" Where did we come from ? " let us, in the same 
way, go back and ask where did Adam, the first 
man, and Eve, the first woman, come from? Of 
course you already know that God created Adam 
and Eve. You have read the beautiful and won- 
derful account given on the first page of the Bible ; 
but there are many things in this account in the 
book of Genesis which you have doubtless over- 
looked. Let us for a few moments study this ac- 
count together. 

If we start with the first verse we are told that: 
" In the beginning God created the heavens and the 
earth." Now there is a great difference between 
creating and making anything. When a carpenter 
builds, or makes a house or a barn, he simply brings 
together boards, bricks, shingles, laths, nails, and 
other things, and with these he erects a building; 
but when it is all completed he has not created any- 
thing. He has simply taken those things which pre- 
viously existed, and so changed their form and 
combined them as to make what we call a build- 
ing. In other words, he has built a building. He 
has created nothing, but he has made something. 

With God it was not so. In the beginning, when 
God created everything, there were no rocks, no 



What Parents Should Teach their Children 9 

ground, no materials of any kind with which he 
could build or make the world, or anything else. 
But God's power and wisdom were without limit, 
and instead of using materials, or even needing 
materials to accomplish his purpose, he simply com- 
manded, and it was done. There was dense dark- 
ness everywhere, and God simply said, " Let there 
be light; and there was light." On the second day 
God created the firmament, or the blue expanse 
above us ; and so, for six days or periods of time, 
God went on creating all that exists upon the 
earth, all that swims in the sea, that flies in the air, 
and that shines in the sky. 

Power to perpetuate. 

To some of the works of his creation God gave 
the power to beget or produce others like them- 
selves. Such objects learned men call organic ob- 
jects. From some others, which learned men call 
inorganic objects, such as the sun, moon, stars, 
rocks, mountains, oceans, and the like, the Creator 
withheld that power to produce others. These 
latter are to abide until God shall destroy them, 
and hence it was not necessary that they should 
have given to them power to produce others like 
themselves. If other worlds should be needed, God 
prefers to create them himself. But the other ob- 
jects, which learned men call organic objects, the 



/ Social Service Series 

things which have life, such as plants, trees, fishes, 
birds, animals, and men, these do not abide or re- 
main continually, but live only for a time and then 
die and pass away. 

Now when any of these organic objects died, 
God could from time to time have created others to 
take their places, and thus have caused that life 
should continue upon the earth. But God saw a 
wiser and better way, and in infinite wisdom and 
love he gave to all the objects and creatures which 
he created, and which he endowed with life, the 
power to beget and reproduce others like them- 
selves. It was not power to create as God had 
himself so wonderfully and mysteriously done; but 
it was a power which in some respects resembles 
it very closely, and which in its deepest mystery 
the wisest of men have never yet been able fully to 
understand or explain. It was a power to impart 
life, to beget and to produce others like themselves. 

If we turn again to the first chapter of Genesis, 
we find that on the third day God created the grass 
and herbs, " Each yielding seed, and the fruit tree 
yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in it- 
self." On the fifth day he created the fishes and 
birds, " and God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful 
and multiply." And on the sixth day he created 
" Cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, 
after his kind." And last of all, in the work of 
creation, God also created man. 



What Parents Should Teach their Children / / 

Now if we take the different verses from the 
first and second chapters of Genesis, and bring 
them together in a continuous account, the history 
of man's creation in God's own words will read: 
" God said, Let us make man in our image, after 
our likeness, and let them have dominion over 
the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, 
and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and 
over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the 
earth." 

" And the Lord God formed man of the dust 
of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of life; and man became a living soul." 

" So God created man in his own image, in 
the image of God created he him ; male and female 
created he them. And God blessed them, and 
God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and 
replenish the earth, and subdue it ; and have domin- 
ion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of 
the air, and over every living thing that moveth 
upon the earth." 

In this Scripture we have a revelation of God's 
mind and method of raising up or producing others 
to take the places of all the plants, trees, fishes, 
birds, animals, and men which God had created 
upon the earth, but which would all, in a few years, 
die and pass away. This law, or method, by which 
parent plants and animals beget, or raise up, infant 
plants and animals, like themselves, to occupy their 



12 Social Service Series 

places, and thus continue life upon the earth after 
they are dead and gone, we are here clearly taught 
was instituted or ordained by God himself, and we 
know that God would not make a law that had 
impurity in it. 

Now we do not blush or regard it impure to 
study the wonderful wisdom and power which God 
displayed in the creation of Adam and Eve. Neither 
should we, when we think properly of the no less 
wonderful and mysterious manner in which God 
created Cain and Abel, their children, and in which 
he still is from day to day and year to year, raising 
up a new generation to take the places of their 
parents, when they shall have died and passed away. 
If we remember that no impure thought ever entered 
into the mind of our heavenly Father when he was 
thinking of these things, and when engaged in the 
work of creation, we shall clearly understand that 
all wrong thinking or acting upon this subject, which 
should be as pure and sacred to our minds as any 
other sacred subject, does not come from God. 
If we truly realize this, we shall then be in the 
proper frame of mind to ask God that we may, 
upon this subject, think his thoughts after him, in 
the same pure way that he thought them at the 
time of the creation, and before the creation, and 
since the creation. In itself the subject is pure, and 
we should bring to its consideration a reverent and 
devout mind. 



What Parents Should Teach their Children 13 

You will have noticed in this account that God 
gave to plants, trees, and every living creature the 
power to produce others, each after their own kind. 
Had they not been thus limited or restricted, peaches 
might have grown upon apple trees, and chestnuts 
might have grown upon currant bushes. Neither 
were they permitted to exercise creative power as 
God had done, else trees might have created fishes 
or birds, and birds might have created trees or 
animals, according to pleasure. But each was given 
power to produce and perpetuate his own kind by 
bearing " seed after his kind." On this account 
apple-seeds, when properly planted, always produce 
apple trees, and peach-seeds produce only peach 
trees, and so on through all the forms of life and 
being. So God endowed plants and animals, and 
every living creature not with creative power, but 
with another power which in some respects, as has 
been said, resembles it very closely; and because 
each produces seed after its own kind, and from 
these seeds grow up or are produced baby plants 
which are like the parent plants, we call this power 
not creative power, but reproductive power. 

Father plants, mother plants, and baby plants. 

You may have noticed a moment ago that I spoke 
of the young plant that grows up from the seed which 
is planted in the ground, and I called it the " baby 



14 Social Service Series 

plant/' A plant is just as truly a child of its parents 
as the little birds in the nest are the children of the 
parent birds which built the nest, hatched out the 
baby birds, and afterward watched over and fed 
them so tenderly. In the case of the birds you 
may have noticed that there were two parent birds, 
the father bird and the mother bird. But in the 
account of the creation in the book of Genesis, 
you may have failed to notice the full meaning 
in the place where it tells of the different living 
things which God created, and it says, " Male and 
female created he them." This fact you doubtless 
have noticed with animals, and possibly with birds, 
but you may not have thought that God designed 
that each baby plant should also have both a father 
and a mother, and that concerning plants it is also 
true, " male and female created he them." Such, 
however, is the real fact. 

In some plants, the father and the mother natures 
dwell together in the same parent stalk, but are 
seen in their separate father and mother natures 
only when the period of full growth and maturity 
has come in the life of the plant and seed is to be 
produced, so that, later on, when the parent plant 
shall wither and die, other young plants may spring 
up from the seed, and thus, although the parent 
plant has died and passed away, yet by means of the 
seed the life of that kind of plant is preserved and 
continued upon the earth. 



What Parents Should Teach their Children 15 

The manner in which these father and mother 
natures are united, and yet show themselves sepa- 
rately in the work of forming the seed from which 
the baby plant is afterward to grow, is perhaps 
most easily seen in a field where Indian corn is 
growing. After the stalk has grown to its full height, 
and the ears have begun to form, and spread out 
that fine silk which you have no doubt noticed at 
the upper ends of the ears, at the same time there 
also appears upon the top of the stalk a great 
number of blossoms, which boys generally call tas- 
sels. Now these ears, with their husks, out of 
which hang the silk, are the mother, or the female 
manifestations of the plant, and the tassels with 
their blossoms covered with pollen, or flower-dust, 
are the father or male manifestations of the plant. 
When a gentle breeze shakes the cornstalk, and the 
pollen, or fine flower-dust, falls from the tassels 
upon the silk, it is carried by separate threads of 
silk to each separate kernel, and in this way each 
grain growing upon the entire stalk has imparted 
to it that principle of life, without which it could 
never become a grain of corn. 

In all plants, the father and mother natures are 
manifested in the flower, and are seen in the blos- 
soms upon the trees and the roses upon the bushes. 
In some instances the two natures, as in the case 
of corn, are united in the same tree or bush ; while 
in others, the father and mother natures live in 



/ 6 Social Service Series 

separate trees or in separate bushes. When they 
are found together in the same flower, the pollen, or 
flower-dust, from the male anthers is easily con- 
veyed to the female stigma, and thus passes down 
the style, or stem, to the pod, which is hidden away 
beneath the beautiful leaves of the flower, where the 
seeds, after being made by the pollen to have the 
principle of life, are to grow to maturity. In some 
cases, the male and female natures are found in 
separate blossoms or flowers, sometimes on the same 
branch, and at other times upon separate branches 
of the same plants. In other instances, they grow 
only upon separate trees, and these father and 
mother trees with their blossoms may be growing 
not close together, but widely apart from each other ; 
separated sometimes as far as you can throw a 
stone, and at other times with broad fields lying 
between, or even several miles apart. When they 
are separated by some distance, the pollen, or flower- 
dust of the male, or father blossom, is carried to 
the blossoms of the female, or mother plant, by the 
wind and by bees and other insects which have no 
thought of doing the blossoms this kind service, 
but are only anxious and intent on gathering honey 
to be stored away for their food during the next 
winter. 

By what I have said you will understand some- 
thing of the wisdom which God displayed when in 
the beginning he created plants and trees, each 



What Parents Should Teach their Children 17 

" yielding seed after his kind," and also how God 
is to-day reproducing, perpetuating, and distributing 
the life of every herb, every blade of grass, of 
every flower, and of every tree to take the places 
of those herbs, plants, and trees which are soon 
to wither, die, and pass away. If God were to 
withhold from all forms of plants and trees the 
power to exercise this wonderful reproductive 
power with which he has endowed them, only a 
few years at most would pass away until every 
green thing would have died and perished from the 
earth, and there would be no flowers or fruit, no 
grain or food of any kind, and famine and death 
would sweep every bird and beast, and even man 
himself, from the face of the entire earth. 

Thus you will see that by thinking of these 
things in the same pure way which God shows us in 
the Bible, we are coming, step by step, to the full 
and satisfactory answer to the question which has 
been asked, how you and all people came into the 
world. 

When we come to birds, fishes, and all kinds of 
animals, instead of the father and mother natures 
uniting in the production of seeds, as is the case in 
plants, they unite in producing an Qgg. Some 
eggs, like those of birds, are covered with a shell, 
but that is not the case with all eggs. Instead of 
the father nature producing pollen, as in the plants, 
in creatures that have nerves, a watery fluid takes 



IS Social Service Series 

the place of the pollen of the plant, and this is im- 
parted to that portion of the egg which the mother 
parent produces in various ways, as we shall see 
presently. 

Perpetuation of oysters. 

First, let us take the oyster, which can neither 
hear, see, smell, nor possibly taste, and because it 
has only the single sense of feeling is regarded 
as one of the lowest in the scale of development 
of all the sentient beings, and we will find that 
like most of the plants, both the father and mother 
natures dwell together in the person of a single 
oyster, and while the egg is being formed in the 
body of the parent oyster, the father nature and 
the mother nature each contributes its part, so as 
to produce what is called a fertile egg, or one 
that will produce a baby oyster. When these eggs 
are fully formed, which occurs in the spring of 
the year, they are expelled from the body of the 
parent oyster and float about in the water until 
they rest against a rock, the shell of a large oyster, 
or some other hard substance, to which they at once 
attach themselves, and immediately the shell, which 
constitutes both the oyster's house and clothing, 
begins to grow and forms about its little body, and 
we have that wonderful structure we know so 
well. 



What Parents Should Teach their Children 19 

Perpetuation of fishes. 

With fish it is different. When God created the 
fishes, he gave the mother nature a separate body 
of its own, and he also gave the father nature a 
separate body of its own. So the baby fish, like 
baby boys and girls, has two parents; one the 
mother fish, and the other the father fish. 

I suppose that in the spring of the year, when 
mamma has ordered a large shad sent home, and 
Bridget was cleaning it, you may have noticed 
that its body was filled with thousands of eggs. 
These are often cooked with the fish, and are called 
" roe." Now during most of the year these shad 
live in deep sea water, and in the spring, when 
their bodies are thus full of the eggs which have 
formed during the year, all the shad leave their 
regular home and swim into the bays, or some- 
times hundreds of miles up the river, until they 
find some quiet, safe, and suitable place where the 
mother fishes may lay their eggs, or " spawn," as 
it is called. It is while on this journey up the 
rivers in the spring of the year that many of the 
shad are caught by fishermen in great nets. On 
this journey the mother fishes are accompanied by 
the father fishes, and when the suitable place for 
which they are seeking is found, the mother fishes 
expel from their bodies those thousands of eggs, 
which are at the same time accompanied by and 



20 Social Service Series 

float in a slimy substance that very much resembles 
the white portion of a raw hen's egg. After the 
mother fish has thus laid her eggs, the father fish 
swims gently over the eggs, at the same time ex- 
pelling from his body a slimy substance which also 
resembles the white portion of a raw hen's egg. 
In this way the eggs are fertilized, the same as 
the grains of corn are fertilized by having the 
pollen, or flower-dust, fall upon the silk at the end 
of the ear, and which is carried by the silk threads 
down under the husk to each separate grain of corn 
on the stalk. 

After the eggs of the fishes have been thus de- 
posited in the water where the conditions are favor- 
able, the parents go away, and never see, or at 
least never know their baby fishes, which are hatched 
in a few days by the motion of the water and the 
warmth of the sun. Both baby fishes and baby 
oysters are little orphans from the very beginning. 

Perpetuation of birds. 

Let us go a step further, and let me tell you about 
baby birds and baby animals. In the spring of the 
year you have gone with mamma into the garden 
and seen her plant the seeds of flowers and vege- 
tables. After she dropped these seeds she covered 
them carefully so that the moisture of the earth and 
the warmth of the sun might waken the life which 



What Parents Should Teach their Children 21 

was dormant or sleeping in the seeds, and in which 
the infant plants were all enfolded, ready to awake 
and grow up, first into baby plants, and then into 
big plants. 

When you have seen the little eggs in the nest 
which the birds built in the tree near your win- 
dow, did it occur to you that these were the seeds 
out of which should come new birds? Such, in 
fact, however, the eggs really are. But instead 
of being placed in the earth like the seeds of plants, 
the parent birds build a nest where they can sit on 
the eggs, impart to them the warmth of their own 
bodies, and thus quicken or awaken the life which is 
in the eggs, so that the bodies of the little birds 
might form and grow as God has ordained. In 
this way, after two or three weeks, when the birds 
are grown large enough, the shell breaks open, 
and the tiny little birds are then born, or hatched, 
as we say. 

If you have carefully watched the two parent 
birds during the weeks while the little birds were 
being hatched, you will have noticed that the mother 
bird prefers to sit most of the time on the eggs 
and keep them warm, but all the while the father 
bird has stayed close by, coming often to sit on a 
branch near the nest and chirp and sing, and thus 
cheer and keep the mother bird company; then he 
would fly away, and after a little time return, 
carrying in his beak a worm, or some choice bit 



22 Social Service Series 

of food which he had found, and flying up to the 
nest feed it lovingly to the mother bird. At times, 
when the mother bird was tired, they would both 
fly away together and, after a few moments, the 
father bird would hurry back to take the mother 
bird's place and keep the eggs warm and guard 
them from harm, while the mother bird would 
take such rest and recreation as she needed or 
wished. 

The home life of two such parent birds is very 
devoted and sweet, and no man or boy can watch 
it without learning from the birds lessons of love 
and fidelity. 

Perpetuation of animals. 

Now next in order and scale of creation come 
animals. Animals do not lay eggs like birds, and 
for good reasons. You remember how it is with 
the fishes. Many produce thousands of eggs in a 
single season. Some codfish have been known to 
contain as many as sixteen or twenty millions of 
eggs at one time. Many of these eggs, after having 
been laid, because of unfavorable conditions may 
never hatch, and of such as are hatched, vast mul- 
titudes of them are devoured by the larger fish ; for 
fish are cannibals, and eat their own kind. The eggs 
of birds are also exposed to various forms of dan- 
ger and destruction, as in the case of ducks, geese, 



What Parents Should Teach their Children 23 

and chickens, whose eggs are one of the forms of 
food designed to sustain human life. 

To prevent such loss, and to accomplish other 
important purposes when we come to the higher 
forms of life, we find that instead of laying the 
eggs in a nest upon the ground or in a tree, and 
then sitting upon them until the young are hatched, 
with animals, the egg, after being suitably fertilized, 
is retained in a nest which God himself has pre- 
pared in the body of the mother animal. Here in 
that portion of her body, which God has marvelously 
fashioned and furnished for that purpose, changes 
similar to those which occur in the egg while the 
mother bird is sitting upon it take place in the de- 
velopment and growth of the egg of the animal, 
while it yet remains in the body of the mother. 
After a time, varying from a few months to an 
entire year, as when the little chick, after having 
attained sufficient development, breaks the shell 
and comes forth to begin its own independent life, 
so the germ of being which has been retained in 
the body of the mother animal, when it is developed 
and grown sufficiently to live its own separate and 
independent life, comes forth from its mother's 
body, and is born, as we say. 

Starting with the plants, I have talked to you of 
fishes, birds, and animals, and now we are to con- 
sider how God has ordained that the life of man 
should be perpetuated upon the earth. 



24 Social Service Series 

How God could have created mankind. 

If God had created each person separately, a 
full-sized man or woman, without parents, and 
without a childhood, all the conditions of our lives 
would be different from what they now are. There 
would be no homes, for all the relations of life 
upon which the home now rests could not exist. 
There would be no relations such as husband and 
wife, father and mother, parent and child, brother 
and sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, and no grandpas or 
grandmas. Each person would stand independently 
and unrelated to any and all others. The loves and 
affections which now give to life its sweetest charm 
and its noblest inspiration would be entirely lack- 
ing. Instead of being as links in an unbroken suc- 
cession of life, you and I and each person would 
stand alone with no one to share our joys, to help 
us to bear our burdens, to minister to our needs, to 
watch over us as our parents and friends now do in 
sickness, or to mourn our loss at death. There 
would be no sweet little babies, with dimpled cheeks 
and chubby chins, no childhood, with its plays and 
pleasures, no school days, and no gradual unfolding 
of the mind and needed preparation for life's pur- 
pose and work, and we should miss half the joy life 
holds in store for us. 

All of the many plans for creating the first peo- 
ple who should live upon the earth, and those who 



What Parents Should Teach their Children 25 

should come afterward to take their places were 
open to God. He was not limited by any one or 
even many ways of doing this, for all wisdom and 
all power belong to him. But God saw that for him 
to go on creating men would not be the best plan. 
The Creator wanted to bring man very close to 
himself, and so God gave man the power to trans- 
mit life ; the power to receive life from parents, and 
in later years to hand it down to their own children. 
In order that this might be accomplished, when 
God created Adam and Eve, " male and female 
created he them," and endowed them with this mar- 
velous power, and entrusted this power to them as 
a sacred gift. 

So you see that the question which relates to sex, 
concerning which thoughtless boys and wicked men 
think and speak so vulgarly and lewdly is, after all, 
to be thought and spoken of only with reverence 
and purity. God made men and women to differ. 
He gave to woman her graceful figure, and a sense 
of dependence; and he gave to man his broader 
shoulders and greater strength, in order that man 
might guard, defend, and protect woman not only 
from outward physical danger, but from every im- 
purity of thought, word, and deed. No boy or 
man can think irreverently of the subjects which 
relate to sex without dishonoring God and wrong- 
ing himself and treating lightly the body which is 
called God's temple. 



26 Social Service Series 

As you have seen the mutual interest of the 
parent birds in the care and well-being of the baby 
birds in the nests, so you daily experience the love 
and affection of your parents in many ways; and if 
you are the very thoughtful boy that I have taken 
you to be, you may possibly have asked yourself 
the question why father and mother love you so 
much as to have actual pleasure in doing such things 
as no others upon the earth would be willing or 
even able to do for you in such a devoted and loving 
way. I will tell you why. It is because in you 
mother and father find a reproduction of them- 
selves. You are a part of both of us. You are 
not only part of mother, because in some senses God 
gave you first to her, and in that divine and mysteri- 
ous way unfolded within her body that which was 
to constitute all the members of your body, " When 
as yet there was none of them," but father likewise 
loves you because you are part of his body also. 
You have likely read in the Bible where it speaks 
of the husband and wife and says : " And they 
twain," or two, " shall be one flesh," and so your 
father and mother are made one in you, and again 
in the little sister who so recently came to your 
home in the manner in which God ordained and 
which he has instituted as the means of binding 
fathers, mothers, and children very closely to each 
other, and of drawing all unitedly very close to 
himself. 



What Parents Should Teach their Children 27 

The perpetuation of human life. 

I have already told you that since the creation 
all forms of life begin with an egg. This is true 
also of human life. But the egg, or germ, when 
formed in the body of a woman, is very small, — so 
small indeed that it is not large enough to be seen 
unless placed under a magnifying-glass. The same 
is also true concerning the minute germ of life 
contributed by the father, and without which the 
microscopic egg would never produce life. 

In order that you may more fully understand 
the mystery of the beginning of life, I am going 
to read to you from a booklet written by Dr. Mary 
Wood- Allen, who is a noble, pure-minded woman, 
and a devoted Christian mother, and who narrates 
the following conversation between a thoughtful 
little boy and a mother who very wisely prefers to 
teach her child the truth rather than to entirely 
leave him to the polluting influences of the school 
or the street. 

" Mamma, how big was I when I was made ? " 
asked a little boy. 

" When you were made, my dear, you were but 
a tiny speck, not so big as the point of a needle. 
You could not have been seen except with a micro- 
scope." 

" Why, mamma, if I were as small as that I 
should think I would have been lost." 



28 Social Service Series 

" So you would, dear child, if the kind heavenly 
Father had not taken especial care of you. He 
knew how precious little babies are, and so he has 
made a little room in the mother's body, where 
they can be kept from all harm until they are big 
enough to live their own separate lives." 

" And did I live in such a little room in you ? " 

" Yes, dear." 

" But how did I eat and breathe ? " 

" I ate and breathed for you." 

" Did you know I was there ? " 

" Yes. Sometimes your little hand or foot 
would knock on the wall of the room, and I would 
feel it and would say, ' My darling speaks to me 
and says, " Mother, I am here " ; and then I would 
say, ' Good morning, little one, mother loves you ' ; 
and then I would try to think how you would look 
when I should see you." 

" How long was I there, mamma? " 

" Three-quarters of a year, and you grew and 
grew every day and, because I wanted you to be 
happy, I tried to be happy all the time, and I was 
careful to eat good food so that you might be 
strong, and I tried to be gentle, kind, patient, per- 
severing; in fact, everything that I wanted you to 
be, for I knew that everything I did would help to 
make you what you were to be." 

" But, mamma, how did what you ate feed me ? " 

" My food was made into blood, and the blood 



What Parents Should Teach their Children 29 

was carried to you and nourished you. When the 
time came for you to come out into the world to 
live apart from me, the door of your little room 
opened with much pain and suffering to mother, 
and then you came into the world, or were born, 
as we say. After you were washed and dressed 
they brought you to me and laid you on my arm 
and, for the first time I saw the face of the little 
baby I had loved so long. And now you can under- 
stand why you are so dear to me." 

" O mamma, now I know why I love you best 
of all in the world ! " exclaimed the child, with 
warm embraces and with loving tears in his eyes. 

I am sure that no one can properly study the 
mystery of the origin of life without having quick- 
ened in him a feeling of awe and reverence. In this 
whole matter God works in such marvelous mys- 
tery that not even the wisest man that ever lived 
can either fully understand or explain it. 

In our summary, there are several suggestions for 
parents and teachers who seek to fulfil the respon- 
sibility upon them and teach the young the meaning 
of sex. 

i. The fact of sex is here in the will of God, 
and hence it has some divine and spiritual mean- 
ing. " But from the beginning of the creation God 
made them male and female" (Mark 10:6). In 
this fact we have a human visible expression of 
some divine and eternal truth. One life, alone is 



30 Social Service Series 

incomplete; the race is not man alone or woman 
alone, but man and woman together. 

2. The body is sacred, and should be kept pure. 
The body of man is the dwelling-place of his spirit. 
Man is spirit inhabiting a body and using a body. 
For the present spirit uses the body, and is depend- 
ent upon it. To have a high and pure and strong 
spiritual life man must have a good, strong, pure 
body. Not only so, but the body of man is the tem- 
ple of the Holy Spirit. " The true Shekinah," said 
Chrysostom, " is man." " There is but one temple 
in the universe," said Novalis, " and that is the 
body of man. Bending before man is a reverence 
done to this revelation in the flesh. We touch 
heaven when we lay our hand on a human body." 
The Spirit of God is a holy Spirit, and he demands 
a holy dwelling-place. To respect the body, to keep 
it pure is one of the first duties upon man. 

3. The functions of the body are sacred, and 
should be kept for sacred purposes. It is through 
the fact of sex that the life of God creates the race 
of man. It is through the perversion of the func- 
tions of sex that the greatest woes fall upon the 
race. And it is through the redemption of the sex- 
function that the kingdom of God comes in the 
world. To misuse the organs of sex, to make them 
ministers of selfishness and lust, to waste one's 
powers in wantonness and dissipation, to abuse the 
powers of sex and poison the blood of the race, and 



W hat Parents Should Teach their Children 3 1 

to make impossible a pure and virile race after us, 
is the most tragic sin that man or woman can com- 
mit. Other sins may begin with self and end with 
life, but the person who sins in the perversion of sex 
sins against God and the human race, and de- 
feats the beneficent purpose of God in the world. 

4. The parent and teacher should instruct the 
child in the meaning of sex, and should instil in 
it a reverence for the body. The failure at this 
point has the most tragic and wide-reaching con- 
sequences in life and in society. A large propor- 
tion of boys and girls who fall into secret sex-vice 
do so through ignorance. Many parents and teach- 
ers avoid these subjects on the plea that these 
things should not be talked about; to call atten- 
tion to them is to make the child self-conscious ; so 
the child should remain innocent as long as pos- 
sible. Strange that parents and teachers should 
teach children anything at all — if this is the true 
philosophy; on this theory the greater the child's 
ignorance the safer it is. But the most superficial 
acquaintance with life utterly discredits this theory 
and proves the necessity of careful instruction in 
everything that concerns the child's welfare. The 
child in the world to-day, the schoolboy or girl, can- 
not long remain ignorant on these questions. The 
child that is ignorant to-day is not likely long to 
remain , innocent. " Mother did not tell me any- 
thing about my body," wails the lost girl of the 



MAY 13 1912 



32 Social Service Series 

street. " Father and mother said never a word to 
me about the meaning of sex," says the boy who 
has lost the bloom of innocence. In all things 
that most vitally affect the life of man, the purity of 
the body, the welfare of society, and the future of 
the race parents and teachers should teach the 
children enough for them to understand the mean- 
ing of sex, the functions of the body, the tragic 
sin of impurity, and the divine blessedness of chas- 
tity and self-control. 



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